Our Week in the Forest
What a magical week full of sunshine! With temperatures higher than usual, longer days and bright mornings, we have been buzzing around the colourful and vibrant Fulham Palace Gardens. With the spring equinox around the corner, it seems that spring fairies may be hiding behind blossom trees! From lovely ladybirds visiting us daily on camp, busy honeybees and baby caterpillars hanging from the trees on their silk threads, we are embarking on a new season of adventure in the forest! 🐛🐞🐝🌸🌼🧚🌈
This week, we read and revisited our core book, The Gruffalo, one of the most popular stories that has helped us focus on phonological awareness. We practised a set of phonemes, such as t, s, and p, through songs and fun movements. During our adventure walks, we discussed where we could find each character from the story. Our little adventurers spotted the fox's underground house and the owl's treetop house, but wondered where Mouse could live. With some clues, they led us to a very special tree with a door-hollow trunk at the bottom, where they found a picture of Mouse made out of cardboard! Squeak! 🐭🦊🦉🐍
Also, this week, we enjoyed a toolwork session with Maria, our Forest School Leader. We used a bow saw to cut wood into slices. Some children had so much fun that they had more than one turn! They demonstrated strong focus and concentration skills while following safety rules. Even those who chose to cut the largest side of the log persevered, showing excellent patience and determination. Then, they chose their favourite Gruffalo's terrible features to decorate their tree cookies. From terrible tusks, purple prickles and even two awesome horns, we kept learning through play! Terribly terrific! The educators also used the smallest tree cookies as our new natural resources to create CVC words so we can blend the sounds and practice our phonics! 🪚🔡🌈✨
As part of our Eco-School Project, we celebrated Global Recycling Day with Dan, who gave us an interactive Eco talk with interesting activities. He brought different types of waste, including fruit leftovers, various packaging, a jar and a pretend dirty nappy in a nappy bag. We learnt which materials we can recycle, dispose of, or compost. Throughout the day, we turned our camp into a toy-free space and provided our Little Forest Folk-ers with plenty of opportunities to use natural and recycled resources instead. We built the most fun tent just for fun, which also gave us shade on a very sunny day and we had lots of fun projecting our shadows on one of its sides! We set up a massive and challenging obstacle course using old tyres, planks and crates. We had a corner full of cardboard boxes of different sizes and long cardboard tubes. We learnt that we can have even more fun with the simplest resources, which offer endless imaginative and creative ideas! ♻️🗑️🗳️🗃️🥡
With Easter around the corner, we were so lucky to have a wonderful Mum visit one morning for a parent workshop at the end of the week. She read a wonderful story about how Christians celebrate Easter and then we had lots of fun going on an Easter egg hunt across camp! All the children found different eggs and then decorated them with paint. In the afternoon we enjoyed a session of tennis in the tennis courts and practised our balancing, coordination and racket skills using tennis balls and small bean bags! 🌈🐣🥚📚👟🎾🏓
What a great week! We can’t wait for the next adventure in the forest!🌳🧚🌼🌸✨
Little Forest Folk
Fulham